Mastizaade: When Life Gives You No Brains, Make a Movie

Humans are prone to making mistakes. It’s hardwired into our DNA to goof up in as many ways as possible. And when we’ve exhausted all the ways possible, we turn to all ways impossible to screw things up. We aren’t ingenious for nothing, you see. Gotta use that brain matter somewhere!

Then, having made absolute and utter fools of ourselves, we then come up with generic fortune cookie gyaan to make ourselves feel better.To err is human, to forgive is divine

Mistakes maketh a man

He who makes no mistakes never makes anything

… And shit like that.

All this equivocation is meant to be a prologue to the biggest buffoonery I committed this weekend – of watching this horrendous movie called Mastizaade.

If you haven’t heard of Mastizaade, I congratulate you on your relative freedom from crass, Indian movies. I say ‘relative’ because there’s no way you can be completely immune to the ‘stellar quality’ content that’s churned out by the Indian film industry. Much like that aunty you heartily wish to avoid at a family gathering, Hindi movies tend to ambush you when you least expect it.

And when they do, there’s no escaping them. Part of you wants to hike to the very end of the galaxy just to rid yourself of their presence. But there is this other part that is absolutely fascinated by their stupidity. Could a movie actually be this atrocious? Did they know that the storyline was thinner than the itty-bitty strings holding a thong together? With all those crores at their disposal, they couldn’t manage to have even one sensible nanosecond in the movie?

Yep. Yep. And sadly, yep.

But I digress. Coming back to the topic at hand: I watched Mastizade – that masterpiece produced by a bunch of pre-pubescent guys, high on the latest drugs and out for a night of orgy.

It’s not like I didn’t know the movie would be crass and an outright cringe-fest. I watched the rushes with my eyes partly covered as Sunny Leone humped the air around her with her boobs and whispered suggestively to a highly aroused Tushar Kapoor, ‘Tum bhi mera doodh pee sakte ho – thanda hai, taaza hai, malai se bhara hua hai!” I suspect Mother Dairy was trying their hand at a subtle product placement and failed miserably at it. Even the poster made me retch inside my own mouth. Gross.

And yet, I watched the movie.

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Why? Why? Why?

Why? Why?

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy????

I have no better answer to offer other than … CURIOSITY.

I was curious to see what a sex comedy in India looks like.
I was curious to see what it was that buffoon Nihlani had let pass under his nose after raising objections to movies like Lipstick Under my Burkha and the Angry Goddesses.
I was curious to find out if I could actually stand a movie whose trailers made me cringe all way to the marrow in my bones.
And, most importantly, I was curious to see how Vir Das, a standup comedian I really look up to, had managed to rope himself in for such a ghastly movie.

They often say curiosity kills the cat. Well, there were no felines that were done away in my 1.5-hour pursuit of cinematic agony, but I could feel the soul in my body wither and curl up in one corner of my consciousness like a poor little puppy that had been whipped too badly by his master.

I know. Cruel.

But as debilitating as that experience may have been, I am trying to see if there’s something that can be salvaged from it. The wise men are of the opinion that mistakes are good. They teach you something. Like that time when I was 7-year old and I decided to indulge in some candle-making classes and set the gas stove on fire.

Errrr … moving on.

Let me just take stock of how this not-masti-full experience has contributed to my learning curve.

Mistakes are proof that you’re trying

… Yes, to make a fool of myself!

When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: Admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it

… Done. Doing it. Oh, Hell no.

Mistakes are the portals of discovery

… Through which I discovered that Tushar Kapoor only exists to be an embarrassment to his family and even intelligent people like Vir Das can have moments of abject stupidity.

A life spent making mistakes is better than a life spent doing nothing

… No, thank you. I would much rather vegetate than ever watch movies like this again.

Always make new mistakes

… Preferably with less odious movies.

We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents

… Well then, this one must have been a bloody colossal train wreck.

Yes, I’ve made mistakes. Life doesn’t come with instruction

… Yeah, but a movie does come with reviews. And I should have paid heed to them!

Long story short, Mastizaade was abysmal. It was pathetic. It was the Dementor of the cine world that sucked the happiness out of my body. It was the equivalent of going through a lobotomy – without anaesthesia! And the worst part is that I had elected to have this procedure done to me.